“I am the light of the world. He that followeth me, walketh not in darkness” (Jn.VIII, 12)

Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity". Pope Francis/Pope Benedict

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Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Pope Francis: His homilies are taking on a pattern that should awaken us

Do you see a pattern here from our Holy Father in his homilies from his daily Masses?"Entrust the Church to the Lord is a prayer that makes the Church grow. It is also an act of faith. We can do nothing, we are poor servants - all of us - of the Church: it is He who keeps her going and holds her and makes her grow , makes her holy, defends and protects her from the prince of this world and what he wants the Church to become, in short more and more worldly. This is the greatest danger! When the Church becomes worldly, when she has the spirit of the world within herself, when that peace which is not that of the Lord - that peace when Jesus says, 'I leave you peace, my peace I give you', not as the world gives it - when she has that worldly peace, the Church is a weak Church, a defeated Church, unable to transmit the Gospel, the message of the Cross, the scandal of the Cross ... She cannot transmit this if she is worldly”. “You are pastors, not functionaries,” he told them. “Be mediators, not intermediaries.” (Addressing priests)

All of the baptised must “announce Jesus with our life, with our witness and with our words,” the Pope said.

“When we do this, the church becomes a mother church that bears children, but when we don’t do it, the church becomes not a mother but a babysitter church, which takes care of the child to put him to sleep.”

Pope Francis explained that there is a constant temptation to “find other gates or windows for entering into the kingdom of God, but one can enter only through that gate called Jesus.”

Even within the Christian community, he said, there are “climbers,” who want to give themselves glory or choose a path to happiness that isn’t Christ.

“Some of you may say: ‘Father, you’re a fundamentalist.’ No, simply put, this is what Jesus said,” the Pope told the congregation.

“We believe in God who is Father, who is Son, who is Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said.

“We believe in persons and when we talk to God we speak with persons” who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like “‘god spray” that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is.”